Dear Firehawk et al: <<<<<<<< If your consultant wants to keep his job, he will continue to refuse to consider a grammar textbook because there is no research that supports the teaching of what has become to be known as "formal" grammar - the definitions of the 8 parts of speech and the subsequent identification of these parts in a sentence. (Punctuation skills - knowing about the "floating comma thingy" - are typically lumped along with such things a spelling and capitalization into something called "mechanics.") Your problem, of course, is that while the formal study of grammar does not improve student writing, neither does anything else. This is the current quandry of the English profession. The professional English people - particularly NCTE - promote what they call "grammar in context." While "teaching grammar in context" sounds good, there is very little definition about the "context" in which grammar is supposed to be taught. This may sound like "writing workshops," but unless you're Constance Weaver, there is little indication that these are effective in improving student grammar. And I think that DOL exercises have also been condemned. When the research shows that basically nothing works, that leaves teachers such as yourself between the rock of poor student writing and the hard place of the consultant's unyielding dictums. However, I have a suggestion that is working in my classroom - start with what the students already know, which is really quite a lot. As modern research into language will reveal to any consultant, all children come "hard-wired" with the basic grammar, syntax, and usage rules of their native language. Therefore, no student of yours would write a sentence such as the following: "Milk because I of went to out the ran store before we dinner." Given a few minutes, most students will be able to translate this "sentence" into the normal English sentence: "I went to the store before dinner because we ran out of milk." or, "Because we ran out of milk, I went to the store before dinner." However, it is important to note that although your students are perfectly able to construct such a sentence, probably none of them could tell you the definition of a dependent clause, nor could they find one in a sentence even if they could define it. However, they all know how to use dependent clauses! Nor would any student who starts a sentence with the words: "I just came back from . . ." would fail to complete this preposition with its object. However, few if any of your students may be able to define a prepositional phrase nor find one in a sentence even if they know the definition. However, just like dependent clauses, they are all perfectly capable of using prepositional phrases! In fact, in their normal speech, all of your students collectively are perfectly capable of using most grammatical constructions. This, then, is where you start - at the most basic level of an English sentence - and have them demonstrate how to create a better sentence, which they are all capable of doing. For example, write a simple, yet provocative sentence on the board such as "The baby cried." Then, have the students "stuff" the sentence with constructions telling "who, what, why, where, when, and how." They will be creative - and grammatical! With the entire class making suggestions and editing the sentence, they will probably come up with a delightfully complex sentence, even one such as the following: "After she was put to bed last night in the back room of the house where her parents were visiting, two-month old Jessica cried unceasingly because her diapers needed to be changed, but her mother continued to drink and smoke and laugh because the uproar of the party in the front living room totally blocked out little Jessica's screams." This may be a little too much to expect from 6th graders, but they'll come pretty close. What this approch does is to get the students writing to create meaning - to "stuff" their sentences with information that an audience needs in order to continue reading or listening to the writer. Your job, then, is to show them all of the ways to answer the "who, what, why, where, when, and how" questions - and, as it turns out, the ways to answer these questions just happen to include all of the 8 parts of speech, which (when students know how and why to use them) they wind up remembering much better than when they were just something stupid that they had to memorize. So to make a long story short, students already know a lot of grammar; they just aren't skilled at writing. The teaching of writing, then, boils down to students practicing how and when to use various constructions; if they wind up learning the names, so much the better; if they wind up learning how to identify them in a sentence, that's fine, too. But neither the vocabulary of grammar, nor the rules of grammar, is necessary to learn how to write, and that's what I think you and your consultant really want. Good luck! Geoff Layton >>>> In your opinion, is it necessary to have direct grammar instruction at the elementary school level, or are the students better served by "writing workshop" and editing "daily oral language" sentences? Our district Language consultant refuses to consider a grammar textbook without research that demonstrates the importance of direct grammar instruction. We've been attempting to teach writing and grammar skills without a textbook for the past 7 years and are now faced with 6th graders that (WHO) have no ability to identify a verb or a noun, and call apostrophes "that floating comma thingy." To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/